


The Assassination of Ulysses S. Grant

by SecretNerdPrincess



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: But Garcy, But I mean what else did you expect, Don't you love Garcy?, Endgame Garcia Flynn/Lucy Preston, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, Garcia Flynn Deserves Better, Okay a touch of angst, Smut, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, garcy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-01-12 07:57:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18442328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecretNerdPrincess/pseuds/SecretNerdPrincess
Summary: The alarm blares in the bunker sending the Time Team back to 1869 to try and keep Rittenhouse from assassinating Ulysses S. Grant on his Inauguration day.





	1. Don't Kill the President, Flynn

**Author's Note:**

> Originally meant as an outtake from @redgold's (I adore your face!) Timeless Movie Redux that took on a life of its own and turned into a multi chapter fic. It's how I imagined Flynn and Lucy getting together. 
> 
> Although this begins in an alternate version of the Redux journal, it is a Garcy story.

“I don't think Rittenhouse cares that I shot Lincoln, Lucy.”

Flynn crossed his arms as the tiny brunette blocked his entrance to the Lifeboat. All he needed to do was move her out of the way. He wouldn't do that, of course, but he could admit that the thought of lifting her in his arms--

“Well, I care. And I’m not letting you jaunt around in eighteen sixty-nine during Grant’s Inauguration. It’s like you have a death wish. Have you forgotten you killed the President in front of him?”

“I’m sure everything will be fine, Lucy,” he replied, touched by her concern, but hiding it.

“Everything will be fine?” She threw up her hands and stormed down the stairs forcing him to move or be bowled over. “Denise. Help me here. Tell him what an idiot he’s being.”

Former Agent Christopher stifled her smirk. “You know we need all the manpower we can get on these missions. We can’t leave Flynn behind just because of his piss poor decision making skills in the past.”

Lucy whirled on him again, stalking within striking distance. “You just won’t be happy until you’ve got your neck in a noose, will you? Fine. Whatever. Get yourself killed. See if I care.”

Flynn watched with amusement as she took the stairs two at a time. As if she couldn’t wait to rid herself of his bothersome person. He followed her into the time machine and kept a tight lid on the laughter that threatened to bubble up as she fumbled with her seatbelt in her frustration with him. He risked a lean forward to help her.

“I am quite capable of buckling myself, thank you very much.” She slammed the two pieces together, pinching the tender skin between her thumb and forefinger. “Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow.”

Lucy glared at him when a chuckle slipped out. One that he quickly turned into a cough. He reached for her hand and she permitted him to take it.

“You okay?” His mirth showed in the lines around his eyes as he brought the tender skin to his mouth and placed a gentle kiss on its reddened surface.

She sucked in a gasp at the contact. He never touched her, not willingly. Not since the time in that Chinatown alley when she grasped at solace and found it in his arms. Their gaze lingered over the miniscule physical connection as if time hung suspended in the air around them.

Jiya cleared her throat. “Everybody ready?”

Flynn pulled back, unsure of the intimacy once he remembered they weren’t alone. Lucy’s hand dropped into her lap, cold with absence of his lips. He adjusted his straps and nodded, as did Wyatt and Lucy.

“Alright then, hold on to your horses.”

xxxxx  
March 4, 1869

Flynn stole her the best clothes. This gown might be her favorite yet. Smoothing down the sides of the dusky rose silk, her fingertips trailed over the burgundy piping that matched the lace at her cuffs and collar. She gathered her skirts, and checking that no one watched, spun in a circle, allowing herself to dream of Flynn’s confident hands sweeping her around a grand ballroom.

 _Just a woman in the arms of the man-_ -she stopped short at the sight of him leaning in the doorway of the abandoned barn, dust kicking up around her skirts. She felt her cheeks burn as if he read her mind in a glance. When she finally took him in, she lost her ability to speak properly. The jet black fitted frock coat and trousers accented his tall lean frame, the deep red waistcoat and wide tie striking against his dark features, setting him apart from any other man fool enough to stand next to him.

“Oh. Hey.” She licked her lips, mouth gone bone dry. “I didn’t know you were there.”

She expected deflected sarcasm. Instead, his response stilled her heart. He lifted her cloak from the old wooden beam beside the open door, closing the distance between them.

“My imagination didn’t do you justice.” He hesitated, holding his breath, before laying the heavy velvet over her shoulders and fastening the clasp at her throat. “You are stunning.”

She blinked up and saw all the answers to their unfinished conversations swimming in his eyes.

“I’m still mad at you,” she reminded herself, her voice husky despite her best intentions.

“I know.” He stepped back and crooked his elbow for her to take. “We should go. Since we don’t know exactly when Rittenhouse intends to strike, we shouldn’t waste time.”

Slipping her arm through his, she tightened her fingers on his forearm. “Please, promise me you’ll be careful.”

“The crowds for both the Inauguration and the parade after should allow me to blend in and disappear.”

She refused to budge. “What about the ball tonight?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” When she still didn’t move, he laid his hand over hers. “You’ll see, there’s nothing to worry about.”

“When has that ever been true of any of our missions?”

“Fair enough.” He attempted to tug her into motion. “Can we go now?”

“Not until you promise me,” she insisted, a slight unexpected tremble in her voice. “I can’t lose you. Promise me you’ll be careful.”

His face turned serious, taking in her words, thinking of Rufus. They still hadn’t figured out how to save him.

“I promise.”

“Thank you,” she said softly and allowed him to draw her into quiet of the early morning.

_We walked. The two of us. Together. Interrupted by no one. Chased by nothing but our own thoughts._

_We just...walked._

_I think I’ll always remember that the world gave us the privacy of those woods. We were so rarely alone._

_We talked of nothing, just enjoying the silence that surrounded us as the weak March sun filtered down through the bare trees, the hint of spring warmth still weeks away. Drifts of clouds passed overhead as the leftover fall leaves, damp from winter’s retreat, muffled our steps._

_From the distance the Lifeboat looked like a boulder dropped there by an ancient glacier._

Flynn glanced down at her, intrigued by the poetry of her words.

“The glaciers never came this far south.”

Lucy smirked up at him as they untangled their arms. “I’m well aware of that. I was being whimsical.”

“About glaciers?” He cocked his head considering this side of her.

“Yes. About glaciers and time machines,” Lucy replied, trying to hide the effect Flynn’s focused attention had on her. Wyatt pushed off and Jiya popped her head out of said machine. “They carved the Great Lakes, you know.”

Flynn gave her his patented ‘of course I know that’ look and replied dryly, “I’m aware, but I don’t know that I’d consider either of those things whimsical in the least.”

Lucy shrugged. “You’ve obviously never stood at the top of a dune overlooking Lake Michigan. It’s surprisingly similar to time travel.”

“When were you in Michigan?” Jiya asked as she and Wyatt joined them.

“A girlfriend during undergrad rented a house there for summer break.”

Wyatt shook his head in disbelief. “You left California. In the summer. For Michigan?”

“My mother hated the idea,” she chuckled, but sadness lingered in her eyes. “Amy loved it.”

Jiya reached out and squeezed Lucy’s hand. “We’ll get her back.”

“Yes, we will.” She looked to her friends. Family. “We’ll get them all back. Amy. Rufus. Lorena. Iris. Everyone Rittenhouse stole from us.”

“That we will,” Jiya assured her. “But not today.”

“Nope. Today we have to save the President. This is becoming a habit for me.” Flynn winked and swept out his arm. “Shall we?”

Jiya shoved him as she passed. “Yeah, you’re a regular boy scout. Let me get you a gold star.”

Wyatt strode onto the path ahead. “Flynn in a boy scout uniform is not a visual I needed in my brain.”

A tiny smile edged up the corners of Lucy’s mouth. “Oh, I dunno. I think Flynn probably made an adorable boy scout. Knobby knees sticking out of those shorts.”

“I did not have knobby knees. Can we all stop talking--” Flynn made an unnecessary adjustment to his tie.

Jiya elbowed him. “Oh, Flynn was never a child. He mysteriously popped into existence. Fully grown and full of sass.”

“We have a President to save here, people. How am I the only one taking this seriously?” He gestured to Wyatt. “Some help here would be nice.”  

“I imagine it would,” Wyatt deadpanned.

“Potomac’s on the right, DC will be up ahead on the left,” Jiya added. Helpfully.

Lucy finally put him out of his misery. “So, the Inauguration. Happens on the East steps of the Capitol at noon. Parade will follow directly after and was known for its extravagance. it’ll be chaotic at best.”

Wyatt scanned the way ahead, falling into planning mode. “We need to locate Emma and her team as soon as possible. I doubt they’ll go for the President during the Inauguration itself, but assassinating a president at a parade is a proven tactic.”

“And if not, then we’re already dressed for the ball at the Treasury Building tonight.” Flynn thought of dancing with Lucy in a candlelit room. He’d almost gotten caught stealing that dress, but risking a glance at her, it’d been worth it.

Lucy spun around, stopping him short, and glared. “Which you will absolutely not be attending.” No matter how much she wanted his lean hands on her waist.

“But why Grant?” Jiya asked, interrupting their staring contest. “I mean, he’s a great military mind, obviously, but what did he really do as President that’s so important?”

Lucy answered in full professor mode, “Signed the Fifteenth Amendment into law and created the Department of Justice. Not too mention, he’s the one who gave us the concept of the separation of Church and State.”

Flynn tucked away the image of her behind a podium for later and added, “And supported America’s westward expansion, relegating the Native Americans to reservations in an attempt to “protect” them. His actions led directly to The Battle of Little Bighorn. So, not all sunshine and roses.”

Wyatt’s brow furrowed as he considered this. “Well, in that case, are we sure they’re trying to assassinate him? Is there a chance they could be here on a recruitment drive? How many other Presidents have been secretly Rittenhouse?”

“Well, huh. Good point there, Soldier Boy,” Flynn snarked as a bit of payback for the boy scout conversation. “We’ll need to split up. Jiya, you and I will focus on the assassination aspect, Lucy, you and Wyatt worry about whether Rittenhouse is looking for their newest president.”

“Yeah, no.” Jiya dismissed his plan the moment she saw Lucy’s face at the idea of separating from Flynn. Those two kids would never get their act together if no one helped them along. “Grant already knows Lucy too, they attended the theater together. Better not draw too much attention if we don’t have to. Me and Soldier Boy will hobnob with the politicians and keep an eye on Grant while you and Lucy blend in with the crowd.”

“Yes. That’s perfect. That’ll do very well,” Lucy agreed with a quickness. “The parade route runs straight from the Capitol Building to the White House. You two stay with Grant. Flynn and I will follow along behind in the crowd and find you afterwards if none of us have any success.”

Jiya restrained herself from rolling her eyes and looped their arms, letting the guys get ahead of them. She looked to the woman who’d become a sister. Dark circles ringed her eyes despite her best attempts to hide it. The last six months had taken their toll on all of them. They’d lost so much that it felt sometimes they’d never succeed in taking down Rittenhouse.

“He’d want you to be happy, you know. Rufus. He wouldn’t want our lives to stop just because--” Jiya swallowed the rise of grief that threatened, watching as an early spring robin swooped across the path. “One day we’ll get him back. And on that day, if he finds out I just let you and Flynn flit around each other when you had a chance to be happy? I’d like to avoid that ass kicking if possible.”

Lucy threaded her fingers through Jiya’s as they continued walking. “There’s nothing going on between Flynn and me.”

“I’m sorry, do you really expect me to believe that? I’ve got eyes, you know,” she replied, disbelief plain on her face. “I’ve seen the way you look at him.”

Lucy argued, “It’s Flynn.”

“I’ve seen the way he looks at you,” Jiya countered.

“You saw how poorly things ended with Wyatt.” Lucy sighed. She and Wyatt were in a good spot, but things had been rough going for awhile.

“So?” Jiya asked. “Just because it didn’t work out because a secret organization brought back Jess…”

“Doesn’t mean they wouldn’t do it again?” Lucy’s shoulders fell as she admitted her fear. “What if we return from this mission and Flynn’s family is waiting in the bunker? Even more than that, I want to help him save them, but once they come back, what happens then? I don’t think I can do it again. I can’t risk the heartbreak.”

“So you admit your heart’s involved?” Jiya gave her friend an indulgent smile. “Then that is all the matters. The rest is between you and Flynn. But don’t pass up the chance at love just because of what might happen in the future. You never know how many minutes you have left.”

_Jiya cracked open a hope I’d been harboring like a fugitive. I’d been drawn to Flynn since the Hindenburg. Standing in front of the flames, face to face with him, when he showed me the journal--my journal--I felt the connection even then. Lurking underneath the adrenaline and the fear, I felt like I knew him._

_LIke I’d always known him._

_Call it what you like. Fate. Destiny. I don’t know that I can explain it even now. But Jiya was right, I couldn’t hide from the hope that I wanted more._

The four of them skirted the edge of the river and the city until the Washington Monument came into view and they stopped, awestruck at this historical view of the American Capitol. They gaped like tourists for a moment before getting down to the business at hand.

“Alright, keep a lookout for Emma or her goons,” Lucy drew everyone’s attention. “If we get her, we can get the Mothership, but obviously we’re here to keep history intact.”

“That means, no killing the President,” Jiya raised her eyebrows in Flynn’s direction.

“I’d just like to point out,” Flynn replied with feigned annoyance, “in case you don’t remember, that I was the one keeping history intact that time around.”  

“You have to admit he’s got a point.” Lucy slipped her hand over Flynn’s forearm and Jiya dropped her head. “Doesn’t change the fact that he was a raging dumpster fire at that point, though, either.”

“Fair enough,” he conceded. “Jiya, I promise not to kill the President today.”

“Thank you,” she replied, “that’s all I really needed.”

“All right, it’s go time, folks. See you at the end of the rainbow.” Wyatt looked to Flynn and added, “If you see Jess…”

He refused to give up on her, even after Chinatown. Jess was as much a victim of Rittenhouse as any of them. Wyatt made vows to the woman he loved and he intended to stand by them. All of this tumbled out one night after they’d found a stash of Mason’s scotch.

Of course, Flynn agreed to help him save her.

“Don’t worry. We’ll bring her in if at all possible,” Flynn assured him.

Wyatt nodded. “Be safe out there.”

He returned the gesture. “You too. Keep him out of trouble, Jiya. You know how he likes going in guns blazing.”

“Pot have you met kettle?” she joked back at him as they parted to go their separate ways, the humor alleviating the danger they faced.


	2. Hoop Skirts and Horses

Excitement murmured through the assembled crowd packed into the space cordoned off for the Inauguration. Flynn wrapped a protective arm around Lucy, sheltering her from as much of the jostling as he could while still looking for Emma. He knew full well she could protect herself, but he liked to do it anyway. 

“See anything?” he asked, scanning the faces they passed.  

“Not yet.” Lucy replied, enjoying the feeling of being tucked into his side. It seemed that since that morning in the Lifeboat, they hadn’t been able to stop touching each other. 

The politicians and judges and assorted dignitaries fell quiet in their places on the stairs and the hush rolled over those gathered for the ceremony. She and Flynn stayed to the sides, threading through people as they could, pausing when the Oath of Office was administered. 

“I always wanted to witness an Inauguration,” Lucy whispered up to him before turning back to the stage, fascinated by history. “I actually dreamed as a little girl that I could go back in time and see Lincoln’s. I think it’s why I started writing about him. I liked imagining what it’d be like to be there. To see it firsthand.” 

Flynn pulled his attention from the crowd, studying the light as it played across sea salt pearls threaded into the fine netting covering her hair. Straying to her face, her lips, the dip in the hollow of her throat, where her locket should lay safely surrounded by lace. He still hadn’t found the right time to give her the new one he’d found in that little shop in Montmartre after they’d chased Emma and Jess through the catacombs under Sacre Coeur. 

He raised his gaze and found her warm brown eyes studying him. “And yet, here we are. Does it measure up to your imagination?” 

She reached up and adjusted his hat, losing herself in his hazel eyes, the color of summer moss accented by flecks of sunshine, before remembering the mission. 

“It’s better.” 

Flynn dragged his gaze from hers, searching the stands on either side of the stage, seeing no one who looked like Emma or Jess or any of the burly men they usually brought along as muscle. As the ceremony ended they melted into the progression of people strolling the length of the parade route. They watched the marching bands and the divisions of soldiers, but didn’t catch sight of either of the women before the White House came into view. 

“I really hope Jiya and Wyatt had better luck.” he said after a medley of John Philip Sousa finished. 

Lucy agreed. She’d love a non save the world moment alone with him. “We’ll know soon. They should be around here somewhere.”

She didn’t see their friends, but she caught a glimpse of a redhead ducking into a small grove of trees on the west side of the White House. Lucy could see the stand where President Grant sat reviewing the last of the parade a block away. Soon he’d return to the White House in preparation for the festivities tonight. 

She glanced back at the disappearing figure and started moving. 

“I think I just saw Emma,” she called back, dragging Flynn into the parade, between a group of majorettes leading the way for the next band. 

He followed along in her wake, almost taking a baton to the head. Another march fired up from behind them, the snare and bass drum beating, the horn section pulsing staccato through the thick mass of people as Flynn and Lucy fought their way through. He almost lost Lucy’s hand more than once. By the time they freed themselves from the crowd, Emma was nowhere to be found. 

They kept moving through the trees until a small two story wooden building came into view. The smell of hay wafted on the breeze. Flynn slowed Lucy to a stop behind the trunk of an old oak tree. 

“Horses,” he mouthed, scanning the open lawn beyond for any sign of Emma. He withdrew his weapon. “Stay behind me.” 

She ducked into the shadow of his back, his arm coming back to cover her side, her skirt brushing against his fingers, reassuring him as they crept forward towards the stables. The sound of horse hooves filtered out as he pressed his back to the rough wood. He slid up to peek in the window in time to see Emma take off on a chestnut colored horse. 

“Shit,” Flynn spit out, returning his gun to the holster and heading into the stables. “I’m gonna have to go after her.” 

“We, you mean,” Lucy corrected, taking in the line of horses filling the stalls on either side. “There are plenty of horses for both of us.” 

He gestured to her dress. “You’re not really gonna be able to ride with that hoop skirt.” 

She watched him choose a tall black stallion and her ice ran cold.  _ How many minutes… _

“No,” she retorted as she passed him petting the nose of the horse he’d chosen. 

Entering the empty stall next to him, she lifted her skirts, bunching the voluminous layers in her arms, trying to reach the buttons that would release her of the cumbersome hoop. Every time she reached right, the jumble of skirts and hoop swished left. She bent left and dropped the skirts from her right arm. 

Flynn’s head whipped back around and focused on getting to know the horse. “Lucy, Wyatt and Jiya will be somewhere around the President. Go find them and fill them in. I’ll find you again before the ball.”

“That’s not happening,” she replied from behind him. 

He refused to turn around. There might be a wall between them, but he was a tall man. One glimpse of her lifting her skirts had been enough to set his pulse racing. Keeping his back to her, he retrieved a saddle.

“You need to protect the President.” he stated, trying to give her another mission. One that didn’t involve her body pressed up against him during a wild chase on horseback. 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Flynn, I’m coming with you,” she huffed out in exasperation. “Now come help me out of this hoop.” 

His heartbeat thundered in his ears and he set aside the saddle he’d been gripping. Dropping his head to the Percheron’s flank, Flynn muttered under his breath. 

“What was that?” Lucy inquired. “It sounded suspiciously like, this woman will be the death of me.” 

Flynn chuckled against the horse’s side and gave in, turning around to find her waiting for him. Not so patiently going by the location of her hands on her hips. 

He stayed silent as he closed the distance between them one very slow step at a time. By the time he entered the stall she occupied, Lucy had forgotten to breathe. 

“I actually asked if you’d like to ride with me?” 

In answer, she turned to face away from him, the circle of her skirts drifting over his feet. 

“But yes, the death of me,” he added, bending down and gathering the layers of lace and silk in his hands. 

Lucy felt the cool spring air kiss the back of her knees, sending a shiver up her spine. Flynn’s hands were inches away, only the crinoline of the hoop between them. One single barrier and he could trace his long fingers down her silk stockings. He rose and his hands brushed against hers as he passed her the heavy folds of fabric. His breath whispered across her neck as he fumbled with the buttons to loosen the hoop.

Conversation drifted into the space and Lucy froze. “I know that voice.” 

“What?” Flynn asked, his fingers still poised to undress her. 

“We have to hide you.” She dropped the skirts and whirled around. “Now! Oh Peter, Paul, and Mary, where are we gonna hide you?” 

She searched the space. Too late to get out and every stall held horses that would definitely get riled up if a six foot four Croatian tried to hide with them. They were out of time, any second now President Grant would join them and this mission would end with Flynn standing in front of a firing squad. 

She glared down at her skirts, cursing the delay they caused. The delay she caused by insisting on accompanying him. If Flynn died, she was going to steal the Lifeboat and kill the creator of the hoop skirt. What was the point of a skirt as big as  as a full grown horse anyway?

She whipped her head up. “Get under my skirt,” she said, frantic for a plan. Any plan. This one would have to do.

“Excuse me?” Flynn could not have heard her correctly. 

“President Grant is about to walk in those open doors and arrest you. Garcia Flynn, get under my skirt!” She bit out.

“I really should get back to Chicago.” 

The second voice that joined the new President’s had Lucy clutching at his lapels, pulling him down, and shoving him behind her. Until finally, thank everything holy, he lifted her skirts and folded himself into the space underneath them. 

Her first thought was that this was a very bad plan. Then Flynn exhaled and his breath hit the bare skin of her inner thighs above her stockings. Desire flamed through her body as the image of Flynn slipping aside the thin cotton of her panties, sliding a single finger inside her-- 

“Miss Shakesman,” Robert Todd Lincoln greeted her in surprise. 

Her second thought? This was a very bad plan. 

“President Grant.” She dipped in curtsy, dampening when Flynn's nose brushed against the silk of her garter belt. He was far too much of a gentleman to take advantage of this situation, but oh how she wished he would. If only she’d seduced him before now. “Robert--Mr. Lincoln. I was hoping I’d see you here.” 

After that first exhalation when he watched her skin rise in tiny goosebumps in response, Flynn tried not to breathe. The fingers of his left hand clung to the brim of his hat, while his right arm wrapped around his legs, afraid of what might happen if he accidently touched her. When the scent of her sweetened, passion flooded his system and he closed his eyes, turning away from the exquisite torture of their position. She curtsied and his nose skimmed over the burgundy garter trailing over the curve of her perfect ass. 

_ “Robert--Mr. Lincoln,”  _ her muffled voice broke through the haze. 

Robert? Robert Todd Lincoln? A low growl rumbled in his chest. The memory of her drunken confession the night she first came to his room with that bottle of vodka flitted to the surface.  _ I could’ve fallen in love with him. It would’ve been so easy.  _ He stiffened. This man might have won her heart if she’d followed through with her impulse to stay behind in 1865. Flynn might’ve lost her before he knew how much she meant to him. To the man who could stand with the President in front of her, while he hid beneath her skirts, a criminal. 

“President Grant, you remember Miss Shakesman, I presume.” 

The man offered her a tip of his hat and a fatherly smile. “Of course! Miss Shakesman, what an honor it is to see you again. You will attend the ball this evening as my personal guest, won’t you? It is the least I can do for the woman who saved my life.” 

“How could I decline such a kind invitation?” Lucy asked, her words light, happy. 

“When your President invites you somewhere, it is only courteous to accept,” Lincoln replied and Flynn could hear the smile in the man’s voice. “That's how I ended up at the Inauguration.” 

“Will I see you at the ball tonight?” Lucy could feel Flynn squirming between her legs. The legs she wasn’t sure would hold her much longer if she kept thinking of all the things he could be doing to her right now. No matter the craving in control of her body, she didn’t dare move for fear of revealing him.

“I meant to leave, but I never did get to thank you properly for everything you did that night at theater either.” Lincoln stepped forward, his toes peeking under Lucy’s skirts. Flynn glared at the shiny black surface of them. “If I stay, you will dance with me, won’t you?” 

“I’d be honored.” Lucy dipped in curtsy again, grazing Flynn's lips and he sucked in a breath, praying the end was near. One way or another. He could think of worse places to die than between her thighs.

_ I made pleasantries as my body begged for him. My desire only outweighed by my need to keep him safe. I remember the vibration of his jealous growl at the revelation of Robert Todd LIncoln. I confess, something primal in me responded. I felt claimed without a touch, like he’d activated a long-dormant female instinct buried by years of civilization.  _

_ We hadn’t so much as kissed, but I wanted him. Even as I stood before the 18th President of the United States. Wanted to step back, spreading my thighs for him. If Flynn would’ve made one move to seduce me, I’d have let him take me right there in front of the President, God, and Robert Todd Lincoln.  _

By the time the two men left, every nerve ending in her body burned. She could turn and bring his mouth within centimeters, could feel his hot breath at the juncture of her thighs. His hands roaming up until his fingers released her stockings, allowing him access. 

She adjusted her stance and Flynn darted out from his hiding space. She spun to face him, his hair mussed, his breathing as ragged as hers. Stepping forward, she reached for him, wanting to be in his arms.

“Lucy, I--” her name tumbled out like a prayer, and he tried to find the words for his roiling emotions. He held up a hand. “I apologize.” 

She stopped in confusion. “Why?” 

“I--you--that was--” he stuttered unable to confess how much he wanted her. Right then and there. She deserved so much more than some rutting urge to mark her as his. 

She couldn’t pretend anymore that she didn’t want him. Her body ripped away that delusion. But it was more than that. She’d been in strictly sexual situations before, they didn’t feel like this. This thrumming building in her bones. 

She stepped forward, taking his hand. “Do you want to touch me?”

His grip tightened. “You deserve better.” 

“I deserve the man I choose.” 

Flynn drew closer until he towered over her small frame. “You should choose a man who stands next to a President, not one hiding beneath your skirts.” 

She met his intense gaze. “I quite liked you there.” 

“It was convenient to save my life, nothing more, Lucy.” He tried to go around those damn skirts. “We have to go after Emma.” 

She shifted into his path. “Convenient?” she asked, incredulous. If he could feel the slick heat pooling between her legs he wouldn’t say that. 

“Convenient. Besides, don’t you have to dance with  _ Robert  _ tonight?” he asked, bitterly, wishing he deserved her. Knowing he’d give anything to dance with her once. Even go to the gallows afterwards for the honor of standing with her in the light.

“Excuse me?” Lucy started to get mad. “What does Mr. Lincoln have to do with anything?” 

“The man you could’ve fallen in love with.” He looked away, didn’t want to see the joy in her eyes he’d heard in her words when she’d spoken to Lincoln.

Lucy remembered the conversation, of course she did. But just because she might’ve have fallen for Lincoln in the past didn’t mean that was even a remote possibility now. Not since she’d fallen--

_ Oh shit. _

She was in love with Flynn and stumbled backwards a little with the realization. 

Doubt flashed across his face. “That’s what I thought.” 

It took her a second, but she saw his fear. His worry that she wanted to choose another man. She made her decision and stalked towards him. 

“Tell me you don’t want me.” 

“Lucy.” Flynn swallowed and retreated until his back hit the wall. “We need to go after Emma.” 

“Emma rode off in the opposite direction of the President. You’ll be able to track her. Answer my question.” She could simply reach for him, answering the question herself. She would if it came to that. 

“You deserve…” 

She closed in, her body acutely, achingly aware that only her skirts touched him. “I swear if you tell me what I deserve one more time, Garcia Flynn, I will wring your neck myself.”

“I don’t know what you want, Lucy.” His fists balled at his sides to keep from dragging her against his body. 

She looked right at him, keeping his gaze as she reached down, trailing her fingers over the straining fabric of his trousers, letting the tips linger over the buttons that would free his heavy erection. 

“I want you,” she whispered, stroking him. 

“Lucy,” he growled out and pressed himself into her small hand that continued feeding his desire. 

She let him go and lifted her right leg, bracing it against the wall next to him. Sliding her skirts up, she let the fabric fall to her hips, and he watched fascinated as she untied one stocking from the garter, letting the deep red silk fall against her pale skin. 

She let her leg fall and raised the other, repeating the action. She forced him to watch as she slipped her fingers into the edges of her underwear, sliding them over her hips and letting them fall to the ground. Turning away from him, she began lifting the heavy silk and lace. 

“The hoop, please.” 

He did as he was told. Fumbling beneath her skirts, Flynn found the buttons and released the cumbersome skirt. She kicked it away and turned back to face him.

“Tell me you don’t want me,” her eyes smoldered, tempting him to sin. To sink into her fire and revel in the flames.  

He surrendered, reaching, lifting her as he spun them around, pressing her back into the wall. 

“Damn it, woman. I want you.” He threaded his fingers into her hair and covered her mouth with his. 

She opened to him, her lips demanding, their tongues tangling as her hands were everywhere. In his hair, on his chest, pushing his coat over his shoulders, letting it fall to his feet. His hands roamed, sliding over the line of her hips, over her stomach, just below the curve of her breast. His thumb dragged over her nipple through the brocade of her corset. Their hips ground together through the bunches of her skirts and she needed more. She needed him inside her. 

She tore her lips from his, unwrapping her legs from his waist to stand on her own. Reaching for the buttons of his trousers, his gaze widened as she released him, closing her fingers around his steel length. She began stroking him, slow, languorous, as if they had all the time in the world. Flynn fell into her deep brown eyes, reading her desire there. For him. 

And he knew he loved her.

He splintered and bent down to plunder her mouth with a bruising kiss. She shoved his pants over his hips and grasped him again, desperate, hungry. They’d waited so long already.

He grabbed at the layers of fabric until his hands were on her bare ass. Lifting her, her back pressed to the wall. He held her just above his erection, teasing at her entrance. 

“Garcia,” she managed to gasp out. “I need you.” 

“You need me?” he asked as he nibbled at her earlobe, easing into her wet heat only a fraction before withdrawing again. They may only have these five stolen minutes. He’d damn sure make them memorable. 

“Oh god, yes,” she moaned as he slid into her again, a little further this time. “Not enough.” 

“You want more?” It took all his willpower to ease in and back out. 

Lucy gripped his hair and forced his eyes to hers. “If you don’t fuck me soon, I’m going to find Robert.” 

That’s all it took. He buried himself inside her. Lucy memorized the feel of him filling her, stretching her in delicious ways as his cock throbbed in time to their heartbeats. Lucy moved first, matching the rhythm of their combined pulse, coaxing him until he lost control, claiming her body for his own. His passion was merciless, demanding. And she surrendered. Willingly. 

Lucy dug her nails into the wood behind her as their bodies shattered, pieces of them flying into the ether until she wasn’t sure where she ended and Flynn began. She wanted to scream his name, wanted to proclaim to the universe that he was hers. 

But he belonged to Lorena and Iris. 

They clung together in the aftermath, grasping at the fleeting connection, both afraid of confession. When they parted, the loss of contact stretched between them and they moved about the small stall, tentative, uncertain of how they fit together now. 

Flynn let her turn away from him, collecting her undergarments and setting aside the now dirty and torn hoop skirt in case they needed it on their return. Tucking in his shirt, he couldn’t look at her, couldn’t risk her seeing how much he wanted her for more than a reckless tryst against a wall. He buttoned his pants and went back to saddling the horse. 

These stolen moments, that’s all they’d ever have. 

Once she’d made herself presentable again, she joined him, her hand reaching up to pet the animal’s mane. She studied him beneath her lashes, the tension in the line of his body obvious after the intimacy they’d just shared. What if he thought they’d made a mistake? What if she didn’t have the strength to walk away from him? 

She ripped off the bandaid. “This doesn’t have to mean anything.”

“If you want,” he kept his focus on securing the saddle. 

“What I want…” her words drifted away as her insecurities settled into their old spaces inside her. “I’m afraid of what I want.” 

He froze. Hope soared to life inside him. “I’m afraid I’ll never want to let you go.” 

Leaning down, he placed a gentle kiss on her lips that tasted of promises, but felt like goodbye. 

Lucy whispered against his lips, “What if I don’t want you to let me go?” 

“What are you saying, Lucy?” Flynn held his breath.

A brutal honesty clawed for freedom. “I’m in love with you, Garcia Flynn.” 

“This isn’t just…” he searched her expression. 

“Sex?” She finished the dangling question. “No, it’s not. I don’t know when it started, but I love you so much I’m willing to stay with you until we save Lorena and Iris and then I’ll let you go. But I don’t want to waste anymore minutes. I’ll take you whatever time you can give me and I’ll be happy for you when we say goodbye.” 

His brow wrinkled. “I don’t think you understand, Lucy.” He laid his hand over hers, entwining their fingers and bringing them down to cover his heart. “I will always love Lorena and Iris. And I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you want to save them. But I’m not that man anymore.”

She blinked up at him. “You are, though. It’s the man I see every day.” 

“Thank you for saying that. I’m glad to know that man still exists. But four years have passed. Even as I tried to save them, I had to grieve their deaths.” His head bowed to hers. “It wouldn’t be fair to them.” 

“You never know. They could bring you back, help you remember the husband, the father you were.” She wanted him to know she meant everything she said. It’d break her heart, but she’d let him go. She just wanted whatever time the universe allowed. 

“No, Lucy, you don’t understand.” He brushed his lips over hers. “It wouldn’t be fair to them because I’ve fallen in love with you.”

The world stilled. 

“Say it again.” 

“I’ve fallen in love with you, Lucy Preston.” Heranswering smile swept away the darkness that had taken up residence in his heart. 

He reached up to tuck a stray strand of hair that had come loose and his ring glinted in the sun, the light catching Lucy’s attention.

“Do you want me to take it off?” He looked down at her, unsure. “I don’t ever want you to worry.” 

“Lorena and Iris are a part of you. I’ll never ask you to take off their ring for me. Just like I’d never ask you to set them aside for me. I love all of you and that means the family you lost. The family we’ll save. Together.”

“Together,” he agreed, happy for the first time in four years. 

_ Racing through the woods on the back of a black stallion as the wind ripped my hair free of the netting, I thought of life Flynn and I could have here. The simplicity of it all. No Rittenhouse, no Lifeboat, no friends lost to the ravages of a war battled through time. I could be Lucy and he could be Flynn. We’d find some land, learn how to hunt, farm. Learn to live without the distractions of the 21st century.  _

_ Maybe I’d open a little school.  _

_ But Emma waited for us. We thought we knew her plan. But it’d never been her plan, she was just following orders.  _


	3. These Hands Are Meant to Hold

Lucy extended her arms, asking for his help in dismounting even though they both knew she didn’t need it. She memorized the light in his eyes when he caught her as she slid down, trusting his hands to meet her halfway.

Her gentle touch on his shoulders, the easiness of it, allowed him to believe for the first time that maybe she could love a man like him. Maybe his soul wasn’t too stained, too battered for a chance at a life with her.

She slowed her descent, wrapping her arms around his neck, taking a moment to kiss him just because she could. She filled it with every tomorrow she could think of and several that hadn’t occurred to her yet. They’d get around to all of them if she had any say in the matter.

He closed his eyes against the bliss, breathing in every promise she offered. He wanted her, all of her. To protect and fight beside her, to argue and make up with her. Flynn wanted to know what she looked like when she got truly and properly angry with him. Which she undoubtedly would.

He wanted to take her home.

And he didn’t care if that home had leaky pipes and rusty walls. Because he’d give her any world she wanted, even if it meant stealing a time machine. All she had to do was ask.

So he accepted her promises and gave her a lifetime more.

They parted with reluctance, knowing the mission came first, but tempted anyway to delay. If Emma was in the woods, she couldn’t kill the President.

“Why are we stopping?” Lucy asked when she finally got her mind out the gutter.

“We’ll have to go on foot from here,” Flynn explained as he tied off the horse. “The river bank’s too soft, we can’t risk Marigold. Emma’s tracks have slowed and I can hear the river nearby. We’ll use that to try and come around behind her.”

“Sounds good. Wait, what?” Lucy’s brain must have glitched. “Marigold? Who's Marigold?”

“The horse.”

Lucy stood there, incredulous. “You named the horse?”

“Well, of course I named the horse,” he replied, dead serious. “I name all the horses.”

“All the…” She tried to fit the pieces together. “You name all the horses.”

“I really don’t see why you’re surprised.”

Flynn reached back for her hand and they moved in unison, skirting the edge of the overgrown riverbank. The ground beneath them soggy from the slow thaw of winter, they picked their way around the thorns and brambles, the bottom of Lucy’s dress torn and covered in mud.

Lucy smirked. “I guess you could say it sounds kind of whimsical.”

“I guess you could say,” he held aside a low hanging branch and she ducked under his arm, ”you make me believe in whimsy.”

“Tell me their names.” She stepped over a fallen log. “What did you name the horses in 1780? With Benedict Arnold, I mean.”

Garcia Flynn blushed. “Our first mission together. Rick and Ilsa.” Lucy’s cloak caught on a passing branch and he freed the fabric, bending down to steal a kiss. “You saved me that night, you know. I'd lost my way and you found me.”

“I know you.” She brushed the crinkles around his eyes with her thumb. “You wouldn’t have killed that boy.”

“If you hadn’t been there, Lucy...” Stepping out of her touch, he strode ahead, ashamed, afraid to see her disappointment.

”You wouldn’t have killed him,” she said again to his retreating back. Flynn didn’t stray too far ahead and she caught up with him easily, stopping him with her presence at his side. “Nothing will ever change my mind about that.”

He pulled her in, wrapping himself around her, his body a shield against anyone who dared come against them.

“I don’t know why you gave me a chance after everything I did, but I’m grateful.”

Lucy propped her chin up on his chest, but stayed in the protection of his embrace. “We’re not so different.”

“Lucy…” Nothing like him. Not Lucy. Not the woman who believed the best of everyone, including him.  

She pressed her ear to his chest, whispering. “I killed a man.”

Flynn’s heart shattered in the wake of her confession. Lucy belonged among manuscripts, wearing kid gloves and a smudged ink nose. Winding his fingers into her windblown hair, he pulled her closer still. There was nothing he could say, he knew that better than anyone.

“I would’ve killed Emma.”

He just held her.

“I know.”

They clung to each other, feet deep in mud. Lucy cried and found Flynn’s arms willing her strength. No judgement existed, only understanding. He let her cry, cradling her shaking body, her sobs stolen away by the rushing river, and she let it all go. Would that he could crush every sorrow that threatened her. He’d burn down the world around them and never apologize.

_His arms felt like home. A home I never expected, one I’d never abandon. Not willingly. But no one can account for the actions of Garcia Flynn, least of all me, for all our shared connection._

“You should’ve killed me when you had the chance, Princess.”

_The cocking of a gun behind me. His hands slipped from mine._

Flynn’s face erupted in silent fury.  

_I should’ve known better. Should’ve protected him. But when Emma’s goons surrounded Flynn, guns drawn, I only saw a future without him._

“I’d apologize for interrupting such a touching moment, but we’re on a schedule and you’ve already dallied enough.” Emma gestured to one of her muscle to come and collect Lucy.  

_I thought I knew anger._

“I’m disappointed in you, Garcia. I never should’ve been able to sneak up on you. You ought to be more careful with the women you love.”

_I was wrong._

“I just need him to do a little something for me.” She leveled her weapon at Flynn as her men slammed him to the ground, shackles closing around his wrists. “But I promise, as long as he does what he’s told, my boys’ll take good care of his precious Princess. And if he’s very good,” a dangerous smirk spread across her face, “I might even let him have one dance with her at the ball.”

_Hands gripped my shoulders, my biceps. I struggled and the man on my right tore the netting from my head, fisting his grubby fingers in my hair, driving his gun into my temple._

“Go. Please go. Be safe.”

 _Garcia Flynn broke in front of me._ _Pleading, begging me to leave him. I couldn’t lose him. Not now. Not so soon after._

“I lost Lorena and Iris...”

_I seethed with rage._

“I love you.”

_My words useless as they tied my hands and forced me into the woods. His last words haunted me every step I took away from him. In his eyes, a storm of shadow and vengeance._

“I can’t lose you, too.”

xxxxx

The bed puffed up layers of dust when the two goons shoved him down onto its lumpy surface before leaving to run an errand. Steel cuffs scraped at his wrists and ankles as Flynn tested how much leeway he had with the chains they’d used to hold him in place.

“I will kill you, you know.”

Emma pretended amusement, slowing her pace around the musty room. “Oh. Will you?”

“If you don’t release her, yes, I will kill you. And I will enjoy it.” Flynn didn’t look away. Emma stood facing him down, determined to bring Lucy to the Dark Side, or so Rufus would say. ”So, you’re going to let her go.”

“Am I now?” Emma laughed.

Flynn did not. Lucy belonged to no one. No one, but her own damn self.

“I do have some use for her. You’ll see. Lucy will serve her purpose yet.”

He thrashed against the chains restraining him to the iron headboard. “I will save her.”

“Can’t save her if you’re dead.” Emma leaned against the side of the window, peeking through the curtains down at the bustling lamplit streets. “And I wouldn’t count on the rest of your pathetic team making a show either. It’s surprisingly easy to distract Wyatt. Seems he just really loves his wife. Especially given she’s started to show her pregnancy.”

Flynn groaned internally, They hadn’t been able to confirm that little detail in the past six months. Rittenhouse had been keeping Jess away from the team where she might be swayed to fight on the same side as her husband. They really needed to find a way to neutralize her. He understood Wyatt’s predicament, but it was becoming a liability.

His face gave nothing away. “I always expect Logan to screw something up. Why do you think I brought Jiya?”

“She’s a far worthier opponent. We underestimated her once, but on her own, no backup, no Garcia Flynn rushing in with the last minute save. She didn’t stand a chance.” Emma pushed away from the window, crossing to open the door to the hotel room. “Finally.”

One of the guards, a squat man with scarred hands entered carrying a new pair of black trousers, identical to his, minus the mud and tears from being wrestled to the ground.

“Gonna dress me up for my walk down the plank?” He bided his time. They’d slip up sooner or later and he’d take advantage of the mistake.

“Thank you, Frank.” Emma gestured to the guard to release his ankles. Flynn considered kicking him in the face.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Remember, Lucy’s depending on you.” She cocked her head, waiting for his understanding. He obliged. “Now, you can’t go meet the President looking like that. I’m going release you from the bed, but try anything and your historian is dead.”

Flynn did as he was told. “You have any intention of filling me in on my starring roll in tonight’s festivities?”

“I’d have thought you already figured it out.” Emma fixed her deep red lipstick in the hazy surface of the dirty mirror. “I need your skills as an assassin.”

His blood ran cold. “You want me to kill--”

“The President. Yes.” She spun around to peruse his attire, nodding her approval. “I really would’ve thought it was obvious.”

“I won’t do it. You might as well shoot me now.” He considered the amount of time it’d take for him to strangle her with his shackles.

“Oh, you will though.” She laid a heavy overcoat over his shoulders, hiding the metal jangling at his wrists. “We’ll just keep those on until we’re closer to the ball. No reason to tempt your inner hero.”

xxxxx

The Cash Room of the Treasury Building looked just like the photo Lucy remembered of an old wood carving back during her undergrad. A single candlelit chandelier hung suspended over the center of the ballroom suffusing the space with a warm, welcoming feeling that did nothing to allay any of Lucy’s fears. Wyatt and Jiya were nowhere to be found and Barry and Raymond, her escorts and guards, never left her alone. Even when a maid came to mend her gown and fix her hair into pin curls that draped down her back.

What was she gonna do? Jump out the second floor window in a ball gown?

To be fair, the idea had occurred to her, but was scrapped when she realized it’d be pretty hard to save Flynn with a broken leg.

She wished they’d have left the room altogether when she removed the overskirt to replace the torn ruffles with a deep burgundy lace or when the the quiet sandy blond haired girl helped her into a new hoop skirt. She could be grateful they at least turned away, granting her some measure of privacy.

Fidgeting with the lace at her wrists, she examined the grand ballroom for the fiftieth time. Scanning the balcony that ran the perimeter of the entire room packed with people looking down at the dancing couples, she searched for Flynn in the sea of bodies, praying Emma wouldn’t bring him. But she knew better. Anything the redhead planned would involve one of the people in this room. President Grant. President Johnson. Vice President Colfax. Whatever happened, she’d do anything to get Flynn away from anyone who might recognize him. She wasn’t done loving him yet.

Robert Todd Lincoln stayed by her side, making small talk she forgot immediately. As a gentleman does, he offered her his hand for a dance and she accepted, knowing one of her guards would insist on dancing with her again otherwise. It seemed she was to be passed from man to man this evening. A china doll on puppet strings.

“You seem preoccupied, Miss Shakesman. Are you well?” He spun her around and through the other dancers.

Lucy brought her focus back to him. “Of course. I apologize, Mr. Lincoln. It must be the excitement of the day.”

“Please, call me Robert.” A kind smile softened his features as he gazed down at her.

A blush crept up her neck and she thought that if she hadn’t fallen in love with Flynn, she could have found happiness with this man moving them around the dance floor with ease.

“As you wish.”

She couldn’t help but smile up at him, wishing she could confide the truth, but involving him would be too dangerous. She had no idea what Emma had planned, but couldn’t risk putting him in harm’s way if she could help it.

Garcia Flynn entered the ballroom and froze as Robert Todd Lincoln swept Lucy across the floor, looking for all the world like they belonged together. He didn’t know how long he had before he was recognized so he memorized the grace of her, the way the candlelight turned her dress the color of the sky as the sun begins to dip below the horizon. Her happy smile turned up at an adoring man.

He wished her this future.

He knew now that Emma never intended him to return home after this mission. Killing another President would guarantee him a quick trip to the gallows. But if his death meant her survival, he’d go willing to the scaffold.

The music ended and their world narrowed when they locked eyes as she bowed to Lincoln. She made her excuses and hurried to him, her guards trailing right behind her as if they expected her to run. She didn’t care, she had to get him out of there. Hiding in the crowd wouldn’t work for long.

Her heart dropped in her chest when Emma and another man appeared beside him, pressing a revolver into each of his sides.

Lucy stepped within easy distance of the other woman. “I swear to you, if you harm him, I will spend every day of the rest of my life hunting you down.”

Barry grabbed at her arm and Flynn’s gaze lasered onto his fingers leaving an imprint on her skin. She glared at the burly guard and ripped her arm out of his grasp. Raymond maneuvered onto her other side pressing his own weapon into her ribcage.

Emma grinned like a cheshire cat. “Now, now. I promised if you were good, I’d let you dance together. Your father wouldn’t approve, but he’s not here and I am. Luckily, I’m a romantic.”

Lucy focused on the woman, a chill running down her spine. “What does my father have to do with anything? He’s locked away.”

“As if that could stop Benjamin Cahill.” She dismissed the two men surrounding her with a wave of her hand and gave the younger woman a pitying look. “Your father thinks it time for you to take your rightful place in Rittenhouse. You’ll never do that with Garcia Flynn running around in the world.”

All the warmth left her body. The idea of losing Flynn overwhelmed her. As long as he lived, there’d be hope. Hope that they’d find each other again. But if he died?

She made her decision. “No. I’ll go with you. You don’t have to kill him.”

“Oh, but we do. I’m sure you’re aware he’ll stop at nothing to rescue you.” Emma reached out and cupped her cheek as if they shared some sisterly bond. “You won’t even remember him once we make a few alterations to your timeline. Nothing too drastic, of course, but just enough that you’ll only remember Garcia Flynn as the terrorist who shot Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant.”

Lucy snapped and gripped Emma’s wrist, forcing it away from her skin. “There is no way I’d ever forget him.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Won’t matter if he’s dead.”

“Lucy,” Flynn reached for her, having noticed Emma’s goons surrounding the President and his men. “Will you dance with me?”

“This really isn’t the time.” Her voice dropped and she stepped closer to him. “You can’t kill the President.”

He entwined their gloved fingers. “They’ve got Wyatt and Jiya. Emma’s men are in place to kill as many people as possible and if I don’t comply, she’ll shoot you. I can’t allow that. If this is my last chance to hold you, I won’t let them steal that from me.”

Tears burned at the corners of her eyes, but she refused to shed them, stealing her spine and looking right at the redhead.

“She wouldn’t dare. If I’m so important to my father, there’s no way she can kill me.”

Emma chuckled. “No, Benjamin Cahill is nothing if not a pragmatist. If you won’t come easily, I have permission to eliminate you as a problem. However I see fit.”

Flynn moved between the two women, bringing Lucy’s focus back to him. “Please. Dance with me.”

The small orchestra in the corner started a slow, sweet waltz and they gravitated together. Feeling his arms go around her, she relaxed into him, letting his body guide her around the floor as she stared up into his hazel eyes, green flecks dancing in the flickering light of the flames.

Flynn felt as if he’d found heaven, but banished the thought that once again, he’d lose it. At least this time, he could save her. And she still had the team. He knew they’d never give up helping her get away from Rittenhouse. He pulled her closer than he should have, but he wanted one last feeling of her cheek against his chest.

Music fading, he knew the time had come to play his part. He bent down, risking a chaste kiss, and her hand brushed against his stubbled cheek, pulling him closer, turning the kiss into something deeper, more desperate. Extending their last moments together.

“I love you,” they whispered, their words tumbling over each other. “You don’t have to do this. I will fix this. I’ll never forget you. I love you. Forever. Forever. Forever.”

_Neither of us noticed Wyatt and Jiya pushing through the crowd to get to us. By then, it was too late. Emma nodded, shoving a gun into my side and Flynn left the safety of my arms. Stalking like a predator across the gilded dance floor, a sea of couples parted around him. I remember the roaring in my ears as he removed his weapon from its hidden holster, leveled it at Ulysses S. Grant, and fired._

She screamed his name, ripping her body from Emma’s hold. Wyatt and Jiya caught up, attempting to stop her, but she kept moving forward, she had to get to him. He couldn’t be alone.

“He’s my husband,” she lied with such convincing anguish, no one doubted her truth.

She didn’t care if they arrested her too. She’d die before she worked for Rittenhouse. And Emma was right, they could change her future at any moment. How long before they turn her like they turned Jess? They’d take away her choice, erasing the fleeting time she and Flynn shared, and she’d be left searching for something she couldn’t define.

No. That would not be her fate. She chose her own destiny. She chose the man kneeling on the floor, hands lifted in surrender as the President’s blood ran a river around those working to save his life. She fell to her knees next to Flynn, slipping her hand into his, and staring up into the confused eyes of Robert Todd Lincoln. A part of her broke at the apparent betrayal.

“He’s my husband,” she lied again, hoping one day, he’d forgive her.

Chaos reigned around them, but the man she might have loved in another life bent down to her level, searching for some kind of understanding.

“I wish I could tell you the truth, Robert, I really do.”

_I held my head high as they marched Flynn and I from the ballroom. Ignoring the horrified expressions of Wyatt and Jiya. I made my choice and I’d stand by it._

_When the cell door clanged shut behind us a short time later, I saw the despair written plain on his face._

Darkness fell as they lay curled into one another on the single cot, her hoop skirt and corset confiscated by a full bosomed matron, who clucked her tongue that such a well bred young lady could come to such dire straits. Another day Lucy might have laughed.

“What have you done?” He asked her, voice barely audible. “I wanted to keep you safe.”

_Flynn and I were never enemies. Not really._

“I won’t accept the future Emma planned for me. I won’t be used as a pawn in my family’s evil plan.” She smoothed away the worry on his brow. “My mother tried to recruit me in Salem. I told her I’d rather be hanged than live the life she offered. I meant it.”

_I think I knew that even before we fought side by side._

“What about the team? History?” Flynn brushed back a stray hair that fell across her cheek.

Tracing her fingers across the surface of his lips, she breathed in the scent of him as he closed his eyes to her touch.

“What would you have me do?” Leaning forward, she gave him a quiet kiss, meant to reassure him that she was still right here. In his arms.

“Live.” He tugged her into his chest. “I wanted you to live.”

_Like I’d always known he never wanted to hurt me._

“There’s still time. Wyatt and Jiya are out there. They’ll find a way to get to us.”

“You always did believe in miracles.” He pulled back, watching the play of moonlight over her skin that beamed down from the small barred window high in the corner of the room. “I love you, Lucy Preston.”

He needed her to know that. Needed to say it to her again. To carve it into very fabric of the stars themselves. What he wouldn’t have given to live a long life with her; fighting Rittenhouse or raising goats, he didn’t care.

Maybe in another timeline, they never had to say goodbye.

_Neither of us knew what daylight would bring, but that night, as I laid in his arms, for the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt safe. Loved._

“What did you name the horses when we rode to Port Royal?”

“I named yours, Buttercup.” Flynn gave her his patented goofy grin that never failed to make her stomach flutter.

“Awww, that’s kind of adorable.” She scooted up, bringing their faces within inches. It felt like they were the only two people in the world, despite the other cells of prisoners. “And yours? What did you name yours?”

She watched as his Adam’s Apple bobbed in between the open collar of his shirt, drawing her attention to the hollow at the base of his throat. Her tongue darted out, tasting the slight saltiness of his skin. Her body pressed into his without a second thought. Her fingers made quick work of the buttons of his shirt, revealing his leanly muscled chest. She ran her fingers over the smooth surface, tracing up to find the scar from his injury in Chinatown.

“What did you name your horse?” she asked again, kissing the still tender skin of the bullet wound, trailing her fingers along his collarbone, teeth nibbling up to the sensitive spot behind his ear.  Her right hand roamed down the plane of his chest, teasing at the buttons of his trousers. “What are you hiding?”

Flynn pulled back, coughing and cleared his throat, “I’d rather not say.”

“Why’s that?” she asked, freeing him one button at a time. “Is there something I should know?”

He swooped in, answering her in a searing kiss that drove every thought, every question, every worry from her brain. If they’d been anywhere else, she wouldn’t have stopped until she could feel the full length of his body naked against hers. As it stood, they were in a 19th century jail cell.

So she released the last barrier of his trousers and wrapped her hand around him, pushing him onto his back with the other and straddling him. He shoved at the layers of skirts, reaching under to slide a single finger inside her, to find the slick heat of her, ready, begging for him. Raising to her knees, she adjusted, poised to accept him, sinking down until he was seated deep inside her body.

They made love in the flickering of shadows and moonlight. Never losing eye contact, they moved in utter silence, afraid to draw any attention, too starved for connection to stop. When they came together, long after the moon had passed from view, they smothered their cries in frantic kisses that covered the fear of what morning might bring.

_The tapping on the metal bars of the cells that came long after, just before dawn, surprised only one of us in the cell._

“Robert! What are you doing here?” Lucy scrambled to her feet.

“He’s the man who killed my father.” Lincoln jerked his head to Flynn, who rose to join Lucy at the bars. It wasn’t a question.

“I was,” he answered plainly, not wanting to lie to this man, not wanting to implicate Lucy in his own crimes. “My name is Garcia Flynn and I am the man who shot your father and President Grant.”

Robert studied her, his expression fighting the disgust he felt standing across from his father’s murderer.

“How can you love him?”

“There’s so much you don’t understand.” She reached through the metal and the man on the other side flinched away from her.

“I do not disagree with that statement.” Lincoln began to pace the few steps of the width of the cell. “For instance, you look barely a day older than when we met four years ago. How is that possible?”

“Good genes,” Flynn replied with a crooked smile and Lucy kicked his foot.

“Just aging well,” she amended before they had to explain genetic material over a hundred years before it’s discovery.

Robert stopped pacing. “I have watched every one of my friends grow old in the time in which you have not succumbed to the same fate.”

“Just lucky, I guess,” came her ineffectual answer.

“Another idiosyncrasy about you.” He obviously didn’t believe them. And why would he, he wasn’t an idiot. “You do not share a last name, but you are obviously married. Though he has an accent, you have none, but the way you both speak at times confuses me. It is almost as if…”

“We’re from the future?” Flynn finished for him.

Lucy’s eyes widened, fingers tightening around his forearm. “What do you think you’re doing?” she hissed out.

He stared down at her with all the love he’d hidden for so long. “Saving your life.”

“That explains--” The truth clicked for Robert Todd Lincoln.

“Everything,” Lucy replied with reluctance and Flynn with understanding confirmation. She continued, “I’m sorry, but your father was always meant to die. I don’t have time to explain why, but keep a lookout for a writer by the name of H.G. Wells--”

Flynn cut to the chase. “We’re from the future, fighting a war through time against an evil organization bent on the destruction of America.”

Robert Todd Lincoln stumbled backwards a few steps, his spine hitting the wall behind him.

“We really need to work on…” Lucy waved her hand in Flynn’s direction.

“How I succinctly sum up difficult concepts, eliminating the need for a five minute conversation when thirty seconds will do?”

Her mouth opened and closed as she tried to formulate an argument. “I’ve got nothing.”

Lincoln watched the interplay between them, fascinated. Married or not, men and women did not interact that way in the circles in which he spent his time.

“Say I believe you. Even for a second.” He did, of course, the two of them too odd for their story not to be believable. As unbelievable as it appeared. “You still assassinated the President of the United States. And attempted the assassination of a second.”

Lucy sucked in a heavy breath, hopeful. “Attempted?”

Robert nodded, looking directly at Flynn. “An inch to the left and President Grant would have died before help could be summoned.”

“You didn’t?” she asked Flynn, knowing the answer.

“I’m a very good shot.”

Lincoln’s mouth fixed into a grim line. “Which is why, I’m going to save her life. The guards are on their way to take you to the steps of the courthouse. She can leave with me when they come for you.”  

“Thank you.” Flynn took Lucy’s hand in his own. She knew exactly what was happening. Lincoln could do nothing to save Flynn. Too many people saw him shoot Grant. But Lucy, the wife overwhelmed by the actions of her husband? An innocent in pale dirty pink? “You have to go. He can walk you right out of here.”

“I’m not leaving you.” Wrapping her arms around his neck, she pulled him down for a kiss. “I made my choice.”

_His kiss tasted of all the tomorrows we’d never live. I wanted to cling to him, but the guards came, tearing us apart. Binding his wrists, restraining him. Robert caught my falling body, lifting me as I beat against his shoulders. He carried me through the darkened hallways of the prison, past the prying eyes of the guards, risking everything to save my life that day._

_The sunlight hit my face and we stepped into the fresh air, snapping me out of my haze._

_Robert set me on my feet and I ran after Flynn, shoving aside the bodies that closed in behind him, until I broke free of the gathered throng  to find a line of soldiers blocking my access. My throat went hoarse crying his name. Robert pulled me into his arms, buffeting me as I watched Flynn’s slow march to the scaffold._

She refused to budge, even when Lincoln pleaded with her that this was no place for his wife. It hit her then that she’d hold that honor only in this fracture of time. She didn’t care, if this was all the universe allowed, she’d claim that honor.

Lucy had no intention of abandoning Garcia Flynn.

_Justice moved swiftly. They saw no need for a lengthy trial having witnessed his crimes firsthand._

A short, wizened judge with white tufts of hair poking out from beneath the brim of his hat shuffled up the stairs of the platform erected for the hanging.

“Garcia Flynn, you are found guilty of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln and the attempted assassination of President Ulysses S. Grant.”

Flynn’s head whipped to the side, sighting something off to his left. Lucy craned her neck in the same direction, but couldn’t make out what drew his attention. He turned back, searching for her through the muddle of hateful glares directed his way. Emma spotted Lucy the same time he did.

“Have you any last words?” the judge asked, paying no regard to his evident panic.

“I love you,” Flynn screamed at her through the masses chanting for his blood, held back by the men waiting to take his life. “Run!”

“I love you,” she answered, her words strangled by the noise as she clawed her way back through the mob.

_I got separated from Robert, but kept pushing through the hands that grabbed at me, slowing my escape. If I could get away, I could save him. I’d find a way._

_Just before I made it to edge of the crowd, Emma came at me from my left, knocking the wind out of me when we hit the ground. I gasped for breath, scrabbling at jagged stones and dirt to get away, but Barry crushed my ankles between his meaty paws long enough for Emma to slam my head into the hard packed earth._

_Before I lost consciousness, I watched a tall thin man in a top hat and long black cloak lower the noose around Flynn’s neck._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the angst?  
> One chapter left...


	4. When I Die

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end. 
> 
> All in all, this story got totally out of hand, but thanks for hanging in there. It's my gift to the Garcy Fam. When I started it, I promised you all the fluffiest story I could write. But I also promised you the Garciest Garcy story I could write. And we all know that Garcy ain't all sunshine and rainbows. I like to think that the Garcy of it all made up for the angst that slipped in. 
> 
> This is for all of you. 
> 
> As always, thank you for reading. 
> 
> Mad Lovely,  
> Secret Nerd Princess
> 
> PS...This story will be continuing into a longer multi-chap fic in the future...

Flynn’s world narrowed to Lucy’s escape and he strained his height to see her through the tumultuous crowd; watching her progress in the ripples of her wake as she pushed through. Lincoln behind her until the mob recognized him and shoved him back in the direction of the platform. He tried to pull free, but too many arms reached, prodded, dragged him forward. The wronged son of America and the man who slew his father.

Almost there, Lucy was almost there.

Emma in pursuit, skirting the edges, avoiding the worst of the turmoil, and gaining distance. Robert Todd Lincoln climbed the stairs of the platform as Emma flung herself at Lucy and the two women went down. Flynn thrashed at his bonds as the man behind him lowered the rough braided rope around his throat. Robert conversed with the judge and then replaced the executioner.

Bending his mouth to Flynn’s ear, anyone looking would assume to say his piece to the man who murdered his father, Lincoln slipped him an open pocket knife.

“I cannot profess to understand everything, but I do know I owe her and she needs you.”

“Don’t give them my name,” Flynn pleaded, frantic. He barely understood the time travel of it all, but he knew the dangers of leaving a record behind. “I know I have no right to ask, But don’t give them my name. The consequences could be detrimental to history in ways even I can’t imagine.”

Lincoln moved behind him, tightening the noose. “Give me a name. I’ll see it done.”

No time to think, he gave the first name that popped into his mind. “Garcia Preston.”

Lincoln stepped in front of Flynn and held up his hand to quiet the crowd. “Four years ago, this man, Garcia Preston, killed my father, our President, evading prosecution until last night when he thought to subvert the will of the people once again.”

Flynn watched the old judge scrabbling to amend his documents, loathe to disagree with the President’s son as he sawed short incisions in his bonds, formulating a plan while Lincoln bought him enough time to escape. He turned back to see Emma’s guard Frank heft Lucy from the ground as she led them away from the hanging and to a waiting group of horses. Lucy thrown like a sack of flour over the back of one, the group mounted and broke into a run.  

The crowd chanted for his blood, but he ignored it, intent on freeing himself. He wouldn’t lose her. Couldn’t. Not to Emma or Rittenhouse or Benjamin Cahill.

Lincoln quieted the crowd again before continuing. “This morning, as President Grant recovers, we see justice done. This man will no longer terrorize America, intent on destroying our democracy.”

The rest of Lincoln’s words faded as the wood beneath Flynn’s feet began to vibrate. Down the street to his left, he saw two riders kicking up dust as they approached. Wyatt and Jiya stormed through the line of soldiers and he took advantage of the distraction to free his hands. He burst into action, tackling Robert as Wyatt laid down cover fire and Jiya halted her horse five feet away.

“Come with me if you want to live,” she yelled over the chaos.

She didn’t have to invite him twice.

Flynn nodded to Lincoln. “Thank you. For everything.” Then joined Jiya on her horse. He jabbed a finger in the direction where’d he’d last seen Lucy. “Emma has her. We have to go before they make it back to the Mothership.”

Jiya nodded and launched them through another line of soldiers still scrambling to mount a defense to the brazen daylight rescue. Wyatt followed close behind, screaming through the streets of DC, past the White House and the Washington Monument until they came to the Potomac and the forest again. Flynn scanned for signs of flight, following the bent foliage and broken branches, the wind bitter against his cheeks. Faster, they needed to go faster. Roaring into an open field, they could see Emma’s group entering the forest again on the other side.

“There!” he yelled to Jiya over the wind.

“I see them!” She urged the horse faster, praying as they raced across the empty space, watching as Emma's group disappeared into the trees.  

The Time Team crashed into the woods where they’d hidden the Lifeboat, jumping over fallen trees and curving around and through the denser growths of vegetation. Their clothing torn, shreds of fabric left like bits of his soul, dangling on the bare branches.

He began to worry they’d lost her until glint of sunlight gave Flynn a renewed sense of hope and they sprinted forward, drawn by that tiny shaft of light. The Mothership came into view and Flynn jumped off the horse, running towards Lucy as Frank carried her into the time machine. Only two of Emma’s goons remained and they charged as Flynn watched in horror when the door closed behind the two men.

Wyatt fired, dropping both guards, but it was too late, Lucy was gone.

xxxxx

_Get yourself killed. See if I care. Get yourself killed. See if I care. Get yourself killed. See if I care._

_Those seven words rang through the pain in my head when I woke in another cell. A modern cell with all of the accompanying fluorescent lighting and sleek steel bars, but a cell nonetheless._

“You’re awake. Lovely. I worried that I’d hit you a bit too hard.” Emma looked over her shoulder from the utilitarian desk in the corner of the room. “You’ll notice the bars. They're for your own good.”

“My own good.” Lucy barked out a harsh laugh and asked one of the two questions she wanted an answer to. “Is Flynn alive?”

“No. I explained that. He was too much of a liability.” Unconcerned with Lucy’s pain, she retrieved a stack of clothing from the desk and crossed, heels clicking on the concrete to leave the pile on the floor in front of the cell. “All of our troubles started when Garcia Flynn stole the Mothership, leading him directly to you and your pesky team. But now that we’ve taken care of that little situation--”

“No.” She swung her legs over the edge of the cot and stalked to the bars. “You killed the man I love. You get nothing from me. ”

Emma shrugged. “Yes, that was an unfortunate side effect of separating the two of you. But you really do need to grow up. With your mother’s death, it’s time for you to step up.”

“And who’s fault is that?” All Lucy's losses washed over her as she stared down the architect of her heartbreak. Lucy was so tired of grieving. “My mother loved me. I know that.”

“Your mother ran away with the next heir of Rittenhouse, foolishly thinking she had any say in destiny of that child. She thought she could hide you.” Emma moved to lean against a support beam. “She was wrong. Benjamin only allowed it because you were far too young to be of any use.”

“I’m never going to be of any use to my father.” Lucy knew her words were all bravado; she didn’t care. If she was going to lose her memory of Flynn, she’d fight every step of the way, clinging to the memory of dancing with him, his hands on her waist guiding her around a candlelit ballroom. Then she’d steal the Mothership and go mount a rescue. Death be damned, she’d get him back. “So you might as well just make whatever alterations you need to and get it over with, I’m done playing with you. I told you once and I’ll tell you again. I will never forget Garcia Flynn.”

“That’s what your mother thought about Henry Wallace.” Emma enjoyed the surprise that skittered across the younger woman’s face. “Did you really think it was just the delay of the Hindenburg?”

“Rittenhouse erased Amy?” she choked out, too brittle from losing Flynn to put up any emotional walls. “Why?”

“Yes, sorry about that. Your mother was far easier to control without a second child.”

“So Flynn never…” Lucy sank to her knees, exhausted, dirty ball gown bunched beneath her, throbbing head pressed against the cool metal bars.

Emma knelt on the floor only feet away and removed her heels. “Oh, he made the whole thing possible, but we already had a sleeper in place. One who took full advantage of the opportunity when it presented itself.”

“How do you even know all this? You were living in a cabin in the woods until Flynn picked you up.”

“You forget, I had access to a time machine before my extended sabbatical.” Lucy waited for her to spill her evil plan. “It wouldn’t do to give you all our secrets. At least, not until we’ve gotten you nice and settled down. No more running around history with your ragtag band of heroes. We’re gonna stuff you somewhere they’ll never find you.”

Lucy raised her chin. “Why don’t you just erase my history and get it over with? I could use a good night’s sleep.”

“Are you in such a rush to forget him?” Emma rubbed a thumb over the arch of her foot. Her prisoner wore a look of defiance. “Oh yes, yes, you’ll never forget him. Fine, have it your way, only one of us will be right in the end anyway. But, as you know better than most, we can’t just go mucking around in your history, we’re trying to cultivate a specific outcome.”

“Rittenhouse’s Stepford Line, Fall 2018. Can’t wait.” Lucy retrieved the clothing through the bars finding a dark grey A-line skirt and jacket with a plain white blouse. “Where are you sending me?”

Emma rose and began gathering her files and papers scattered across the desk. “Somewhere you can’t cause any harm.”

xxxx

The Lifeboat settled back into place in the bunker. Flynn already out of his seat, ready to save Lucy.

Jiya stopped him mid-exit, choosing to keep the door closed for now. “I hate to point this out, but we have no idea how Flynn’s actions affected the timeline. Speaking of...” She gave him a pointed look. “You promised me you wouldn’t shoot the President.”

“I promised you I wouldn’t kill the President,” he distinguished. “And I think we have far more pressing matters.”

“The first of which is you are now an official part of history.”

“Lincoln altered my name, so at least there is that.”

Jiya sighed. “Well, it’s a small consolation. Hopefully it’ll be enough, but who knows what waits outside those doors. And look, I get that we have to find Lucy before all of our memories change without our knowledge, but we should be prepared that we may have irrevocably altered time.”

Wyatt gave a curt nod. “I’ll go out first. Then Jiya. Flynn you stay put until we confirm it’s safe.”

Jiya started the opening sequence. The dry, cool air of the bunker seeped in the door and the three of them held their breath, anxious, waiting to see just how much they screwed up.

“Garcia _Preston_ get your ass out of that time machine and explain yourself,” Agent Denise Christopher demanded.

Flynn hung his head. “Well, that answers that.”

They filed out of the Lifeboat and found themselves greeted by an annoyed Mama Bear and an amused, but trying not to show it, Mason. A young woman with light brown hair stood between them, looking behind the team at the empty Lifeboat.

“When did we start recruiting?” Flynn asked, studying the woman, something familiar in her face.

“Ha ha, very funny, Flynn. Where’s my sister?” The woman strode right up to him, stopping only a foot away.

Wyatt stared slack-jawed at the woman. “Amy?”

“Holy crap. Amy!” Jiya dragged the woman she’d never actually met into a fierce quick hug.

“Amy?” Flynn looked from Wyatt to Denise. “Lucy’s sister Amy?”  

The tiny, fierce, obviously related to Lucy Preston, woman rolled her eyes. “Of course, it’s Amy, who else would it be? Now you have--”

Jiya interrupted. “How did Flynn shooting Grant bring Amy back?”

“What do you mean bring Amy back?” Mason questioned, following Jiya as she jogged to the computers.

“In our timeline, Amy was accidentally erased.” Seating herself, she started digging. “Tell me about our first mission. The Hindenburg.”

“What does the Hindenburg have to do with anything?” Denise called over her shoulder keeping a watchful eye on Flynn and Wyatt. “Flynn tried to alter history, but failed and the Hindenburg still caught fire on May 6, 1937.”

“Henry Wallace is your father?” Wyatt asked Amy waiting for Jiya to do work her hacker magic.

Lucy’s sister nodded. “Yes. You know that.”

Jiya’s fingers flew over the keyboard. “Hindenburg exploded. Garcia Flynn made contact with Lucy. Yes, yes, but why did he--” Her head whipped around to stare at him. “You saved her life.”

“Who?” Flynn shook his head considering the people he came into contact with on that first mission.

Jiya broke into a wide grin. “Apparently, the mysterious Garcia Preston, time-traveling assassin turned hero saved Kate Drummond.”

“Wait. What?” Flynn choked out.

“Yes, it appears that you and Miss Drummond crossed paths and she thought she recognized you from an old wood carving of Grant’s Inaugural Ball. And then, in another old grainy photo from the hanging.” Denise raised her eyebrows and Flynn waved away her unspoken question. “On a whim, she called your name and you responded. Long story short, you were delayed long enough that when the Hindenburg burst into flames, you were there to get her away from the falling wreckage.”

Flynn scrubbed at his head, “So am I to understand that we unerased Amy, because I was running late, which also means I saved Kate Drummond, just for good measure? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“That’s what I’m telling you. She goes on to become a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who also writes historicals about Lincoln’s mysterious time-traveling assassin.” She stood, leaning on the rail of the platform. “You did still threaten Lucy and the team though, lest any of this go to your head.”

He offered her a mock salute. “Understood.”

Denise scanned over the group’s various reactions. “I’m still waiting for an explanation and I’m losing patience.”

“As am I,” Amy added. “Somehow yesterday I didn’t exist and today I do. Fine. Whatever. I’m already over it. But somebody better tell me where Lucy is before I get mad.”

Guilt ate at Flynn. “I failed her. We thought Emma wanted to kill the President. She laid a trap and we walked right into it. She wanted me dead and Lucy in her father’s grasp. Almost succeeded in killing me, except that Robert Todd Lincoln slipped me a knife and Jiya and Wyatt rode in for the rescue.”

He didn’t want to admit the rest, just wanted to find her and bring her home. Barrelling ahead, damn the consequences, appealed to him, but he knew better. They needed to be smart.

“Emma has Lucy?” Mason walked down the stairs to stand next to Amy, wrapping a fatherly arm around her.

“Yes.” Flynn raised his eyes to Lucy’s sister. “I made her a promise once and I give you the same promise now. We will save the people we love.”

xxxxx  
December 8, 1941  
Lyons, France

Otto Dix slugged the wine and passed it back to Hemingway. “Oh, do tell me more about your icebergs of plot hiding just below the surface.”

“You know nothing, Jon Snow,” he retorted and Lucy cringed. “That’s the phrase, right?”

“You know nothing.” She nodded, thinking of Flynn. As she always did. What would he say to her interjecting pop culture into the 1940s? Nothing, likely, but she considered his responses to everything these days it seemed.

Another news report about the bombing of Pearl Harbor came over the radio and Lucy thought of all the things she couldn’t change. Knowing the future, but unable to act. To stop any of the heinous events about to unfold on history.

“Buttercup…” the rakish author cajoled, “that face, it’s too pretty to--”

They laughed in defiance of the oncoming devastation.

“I swear to you, _Ernest_ , if you continue that sentence I will inform Martha of all your extracurricular activities.” Lucy gave him a Flynn look. “I’ll have you cut off from here to China.”

Hemingway clutched his heart in mock affront. “You wound me, milady.”

“I wound nothing, but your fragile male ego.” Lucy smiled and swiped the wine bottle from him. “Now, aren’t we supposed to be planning the next _dinner party_?”

“The meeting on Saturday after next.” Rose Valland pulled out a small notebook. “That will do nicely, yes. But it looks like rain the Thursday following, so I say we focus on the gathering on the 31st.”

“Agreed,” Ginny responded looking over the rest of the group.

_Emma underestimated me when she dumped me in the middle of a world war. Should’ve sent me to Antarctica on a polar expedition. Abandoned me in 16th century Virginia. Left me on an abandoned island in the middle of the South Pacific with six months of supplies and some sunscreen._

_Instead, she stranded me smack dab in the heart of the French Resistance._

_And I made friends._

_Virginia Hall, Allied spy and bain of the Germans. Josephine Baker, smuggler of coded information in her sheet music and underwear, counting on her celebrity to allow her to pass. Rose Valland, overseer of the Jeu de Plaume museum in Paris. Countless works of art might have been destroyed without her coordination of the attacks on the train lines. Otto Dix, German artist resisting from behind the front lines, dragged here by Hemingway, the drunken scribe and archivist of these dangerous days, if Lucy had anything to say about it. She couldn’t change much, but she could encourage him to remember._

“If we’re all in agreement then?” Josie sipped out of her almost empty glass. Dix, Hemingway, and Lucy nodded their assent. “Good. Now, we need to talk about Gurlitt.”

“Traitor,” Dix spit out as he lifted his charcoal pencil from his sketchpad. “Any man who would work with them. To steal our art. He is not to be trusted.”

“He is saving the art. That is what matters.” Virginia Hall replied, evenly. “It is not for us to judge what others are willing to risk.”

Lucy leaned over, laying her hand over her friend’s. “Ginny, I know you want to believe the best in everyone…”

“I believed the best in you, didn’t I?”

Ginny found Lucy wandering in an ill-fitting suit in the middle of the French countryside during the second world war, with no idea of the day let alone the year. Without a thought, she brought her back to the convent to feed her stew and put her to bed with her tears and loneliness instead of leaving her to starve in the wilderness. It took a certain kind of stupidity that Lucy was grateful for every day.

“Yes. And you got incredibly lucky with me.” Lucy winked, ripping off a chunk of bread and dipping it olive oil.

Hemingway stilled her hand mid-dunk. “I consider the day we met lucky.”

“You consider any day you meet a woman lucky.” She smirked and focused back on the topic at hand. “Rose, you’re sure you can track the artwork? The museum won’t suspect you?”

The bespeckled brunette met her direct gaze. “I cannot give more, cannot step into the light as some do. But this I can do. I assure you, the art will not be lost. We will bring it home again.”

“Then I say we use him, but don’t trust him.” Him. Hlildebrand Gurlitt. The German art dealer of Jewish descent who stole or purchased fifteen hundred pieces of art labeled Degenerate by Adolf Hitler. Collecting for his Fuhrermuseum that never got built. Lucy always wondered why he did it. Collaborated. “There’s no reason he needs to know that Rose is keeping a ledger as a safeguard for the future. Stay friendly, but wary.”

“I understand.” Rose replied, turning to face the dark-haired American spy. “It is not much, but not all of us are as brave as Ginny.”

“Whether I’m brave or dumb will be proved sooner or later. Until then, me and Cuthbert,” Virginia knocked against her wooden leg, “we’ll stand on the right side of history.”

“The right side of history,” Lucy agreed, grabbing Ginny’s hand, thankful that if she had to be stranded, it was here, in 1941, with these people.

It’d taken three months at the Convent of the Visitation with Ginny to get the spy to trust her, but when Lucy walked into her first “dinner party” to find Hemingway and Josephine Baker sitting there sipping martinis, she nearly cried to see a familiar face.

That night Hemingway drunkenly threw down the gauntlet. Hitler’s minions ravaged the art community, stealing or destroying priceless works of art. They needed to do something about it. It took another two months to figure out who to trust, who to involve.

_Sitting in Hemingway’s living room, planning gave me purpose, a reason to keep fighting. I couldn’t do nothing. Stuck in the past, waiting for my future to face me. Wondering if every day would be the last that I remembered him._

A knock sounded from the back door and Lucy stiffened. “Are we expecting someone?”

“No, so sorry,” Josie pushed away from the table, “It’s just Dave. Back from grabbing supplies.”

Before Lucy could ask who she meant, Dave Baumgartner walked into the kitchen.

xxxxx  
_Six months later_

Flynn stared at the ceiling, going over every mission they’d had since he lost Lucy. The midnight ride of Paul Revere. The Detroit Riots of 1967. Saving Shakespeare when the Globe Theater burned down in 1613. Every time expecting to find her.

There’d been no sign. No clues. No leads to follow. No indication she existed at all.

Jiya scoured her connections in the darker corners of the internet and came away empty handed. Agent Christopher pulled every one of the few strings she had left to pull, each thread leading to yet another dead end. Mason tried a kind of backtrace on the Mothership, hoping he could at least triangulate a location, but Lucy might as well be in the Bermuda Triangle for all he could find. Amy came along on missions, a sociologist rather than a historian, but she still helped them blend in and make friends.

Searching, every brunette the ghost of her sister.

Flynn reached over to Lucy’s collection of books he’d confiscated from Jiya’s room. Picking up _The Old Man and the Sea_ , he settled in for the night.

He rarely slept these days, haunted by his failures. When the shadows fell late at night, he heard her screaming his name over the roar of the crowd. The fleeting hours that unconsciousness claimed him he spent chasing after those he lost, trying to save them. Succeeding only to have them ripped from his grasp. Waking in sweat drenched sheets, their faces fading. His arms, empty and aching.

_Only if we give up hope._

His words echoed as he lay shaking in darkness.

_Somehow. Some way._

Her face as he promised her.

_We’ll save the people we love._

Never. He’d never give up on Lucy Preston.

Banishing the doubts, he decided instead to read through her small library. Her historical texts were in mint condition, but the novels were highlighted and dogged ear, all broken spines and torn covers. Obviously loved and reread often. He opened the book and thumbed past the first few pages stopping only when he read the inscription at the beginning.

 _For Buttercup._  
_Who encouraged me to remember_  
_and reminded me to fight._  
_For love._  
_For truth._ _  
_ For history.

Buttercup. The name he gave to Lucy’s horse. It had to be a coincidence. Flynn argued with himself: probable delirium. He was seeing clues in a seventy year old novel. Occam’s razor. The simplest answer was most often the correct one.

He missed Lucy and desperately needed sleep.

But hadn’t Lucy mentioned that the team met Hemingway when Flynn shot down Lindbergh’s plane? So...what if?

Flynn grabbed his hoodie from the chair, shoved the book in his pocket, and padded out to the kitchen in his socks. As expected, he found Jiya and Amy pouring over plans to save Rufus. Charts and graphs spread over several tables considering every potential impact to the timeline. Jiya wanted to save the love of her life, not burn down San Francisco and come back to a world run by Rittenhouse.

“Flynn, what are you doing up?” Amy capped a highlighter and stuck it in her ponytail.

He pulled out a seat. “This is going to sound insane.”

Jiya didn't bother to look up from her notes. “We travel through time saving history from an secret evil organization bent on world domination. Insane is every spoke in our wheelhouse.”

“Well I think it’s about damn time you pulled up your broody pants and started thinking outside the box,” Amy scoffed. Jiya shot her a glare. “What? It’s like he’s reverted to a prehistoric man on the cusp of language. Where is Lucy? Bang bang. Bad man dead. Next.”

Jiya defended her friend. “He’s doing the best he can. We all are.”

“Is he though?” Amy pulled her hand away when Jiya reached for her. “He doesn’t seem to be doing much of anything these days.”

Flynn didn’t avert his eyes from Amy’s fury. He deserved this.  

Jiya slammed her hand on the table, pissed. “Alright, that’s enough.”

“I don’t think it’s near enough.” Amy stood, staring him down, her expression so like Lucy’s that Flynn wanted to cry. “You were supposed to protect her. _You_ were. I trusted you and It’s like you don’t even care that any second now we could all forget her.”

“You wouldn’t,” Flynn responded, his words deadly calm.

“Excuse me?” Amy pushed away from the table, the legs of her chair scraping in protest.

“You wouldn’t forget her.” He laid his hands flat on the table in front of him, fingertips pressing into the surface as if he could splinter it from the churning of guilt and rage that threatened to bury him. “As her sister, they can alter her life, but as long as you both exist, you’ll always remember her. I have no such guarantees.”

He studied the scars traced across his skin. “On the day I told your sister I loved her, I lost her. I live terrified every night I retreat to that room that in the morning, she will be gone. I could forget our everything. Every smile. Every laugh. Every argument. I will be left with nothing but a gaping hole with no idea how to fill the emptiness. It will all be gone.”

Dancing with her just that once, her eyes shining up at him as they soared around the room. The world reduced to the two of them. Every kiss, her lips pliant under his. Giving. Taking. Their bodies swept along by passion they'd denied for far too long.

The way she whispered I love you like a benediction.

“And I won’t even know it,” he choked out, his voice barely audible from the emotion threatening to overwhelm him.

A heavy weight descended over Amy and she sank back down in her chair. “I'm sorry, I didn’t mean it. I’m just--you came back without her and you’re not the Flynn I knew and I--” She dropped her head into her hands. “I’m just so scared I’ll never see her again.”

“We’re all worried about Lucy, but she’s a fighter.” Jiya reached for her and this time Amy didn’t pull away. “We’re gonna bring her home.”  

“We’re gonna fix this.” Amy nodded and covered Flynn’s hand with hers. “Now tell me about your insanity.”

He offered her a crooked smile. “We were friends in your timeline then?”

“Well, you kept making heart eyes at my sister all the time, so I took pity on you. You needed a friend.”

“That sounds about right,” Jiya teased, the tension broken. “Now, I feel like we haven’t really filled our quota of crazy lately, so give it to me.”

Flynn swallowed his grief. “We’ve been so concerned with Emma’s threat to erase Lucy, but look at you two.” He spread his arms, indicating the copious piles of research. “You’ve been trying to figure out how to save Rufus without wrecking the universe for months now. You can’t just take a switchblade to someone’s life.”

“Make sense. So, how far back does Rittenhouse need to go in Lucy’s life to attain the desired results?” Jiya thought out loud, studying Amy. “You can’t just go back to 1985 and put her in private school. You’ve got to think about the peripheral people. Amy coming back must have complicated their plans.”

Flynn agreed. “Something as precise as crafting Lucy’s life so that she ends up working in the family business? That’s gonna take time. But we know Lucy. It doesn’t matter where Rittenhouse is, if she’s in the present, she’d find a way to escape.” He withdrew Lucy’s copy of _Old Man and the Sea,_ gripping the book like it was his only connection to her _._ “But we’ve searched everywhere and there’s been absolutely no sign, right?”

“And that’s weird. There should be something. Rittenhouse is a huge organization and we know they’ve been expanding their roster of agents since Emma’s been staying out of sight.” Jiya’d been wondering about the radio silence herself. “But they should be leaving some kind of footprint. Which means their being really careful. And probably planning something, but that’s tomorrow’s problem. If they had Lucy Preston hidden within Rittenhouse, we’d have heard something by now.”

“And we know Rittenhouse likes to use sleepers.” Flynn let the thought hang between them.

“You think Emma hid her in time.” Jiya rose and crossed to the computers. She called over her shoulder as she woke up the terminals. “Where?”

“I’m not sure. It could be nothing.” He took the stairs two at a time and joined her. Flynn opened the Hemingway novel to the inscription and laid it flat on the desk between them. “Buttercup was the name I gave one of Lucy’s horses.”

“You named Lucy’s horses?” Amy snorted from the top of the stairs behind them. “That is adorable.”

Jiya smirked, but refrained from adding her own comment.

“Yes, well,” Flynn cleared his throat. “Anyway. The team met Hemingway back in 1927, right? And with the mention of history. I know it’s farfetched, but it’s something to go on.”

“So we think Emma stashed Lucy somewhere between the years of 1927 and when was it written?” Jiya asked while she tried a combination of words, hoping they’d get lucky and get a hit right out the gate.

Flynn flipped back a couple pages, reading the text. “1952.”

“So between 1927 and 1952.” Her hands stilled on the keys. “That’s twenty-five years worth of history. We need to narrow it down somehow.”  

“If Lucy’s stuck somewhere in the past, she’d find some way to get our attention, right?” Amy leaned against the railing. “She can’t change history in big ways because there’s no guarantees that you’d be on a mission, remember the original history, and eventually notice the change when you got back.”

Jiya turned in her seat to face both of them. “When I sent that message to Rufus, it was through a photograph in a book. We’ll have to go through--”

Flynn finished Jiya’s sentence, “All her books. I’ll do that.”

Jiya looked to their sociologist. “So outside the box. How would your sister get our attention?”

“I’d look for anything out of the ordinary. Any big discoveries, like King Tut’s tomb big. A missing Shakespeare manuscript big. I’d also check around any of the times you already visited. Look for anachronisms, a phrase out of time, a concept introduced too soon. When you add in those factors, twenty-five years isn’t that much time at all.”

Flynn retrieved the book, tucking it safely away. “I’ll start with Hemingway.”

_xxxxx_

The sun bathed the cafe in a comforting golden light. She, Ginny, and Dix made a habit of coming here the morning after their meetings. He sketched the ladies as they chatted easily, planning meals for the week. The nuns allowed them their freedom, asking only that they contribute to convent. They shared a small cottage tucked into a nook in the back of the property and happily helped with the chores, washing and hanging laundry, peeling potatoes, weeding the gardens.

The bell above the door rang and a shadow fell across the light as Bam Bam entered the cafe followed by Josie and Hemingway.

Bam Bam. She never thought she’d see him again. When he’d walked into Hemingway’s last night, she sobbed and flung her arms around him, apologizing for just leaving him. He’d lost his entire life when she and Rufus abandoned him, thinking him dead. Apparently, Josie and Hemingway found him bleeding in the alley outside the bar. Neither of them were medics and they couldn’t really tell a low pulse from no pulse so they erred on the side of caution and got him to the hospital. Saving him when his team had not. Without a way to get back to the present, he made a life here, traveling as Josie’s security.

Just like Lucy had. She had no idea if she’d ever get back home. If the team would ever find her or if Emma just planned to leave her, growing old trapped in the past. They lived simple lives. Good lives despite the war that crept closer. But she missed her friends. She missed Flynn’s steady presence, the safety she felt with him by her side.

“We got Rose to the train without any problems and thought we’d join you,” Josie commented, removing her wide-brimmed hat and setting it aside.

So they took these moments, when the world seemed at peace.

“Is that Hemingway?” Lucy shook off her sadness and pretended to rub at her eyes. “And before noon? Will wonders never cease.”

He pulled a chair up, leaning back and lazing like a cat in a beam of sunshine. “She barged in my house at an ungodly hour and demanded I accompany her. She threatened the booze.”

Lucy gasped in horror. “Oh, no, not the hooch!”

“Stole my flask right off the nightstand and threatened to go through the rest of the house if I didn’t comply with her wishes.”

She sipped her latte. “And what are these great and terrible wishes that have caused you such irreparable harm?”

“You leave for China soon and we have company,” Josie stated. “The war continues unabated and who knows when we’ll all be together again. So, yes, dear Ernest, you are going to be social before mid-evening.”  

Dave set an espresso next to Josie on the table and passed behind Dix, noticing his sketch. He looked from the drawing up at Lucy and back down.

“You’ve captured her perfectly.” He comments, studying the drawing. Lucy sat next to Ginny, obviously mid conversation, but looking beyond all of it. Coffee forgotten in her upraised hand.

“Our Buttercup.” Dix ran a pinky over the parchment, shading the corner of the cafe.  “Always looking for those she lost.”

“I know the feeling.” Bam Bam sat down next to her. “By the way, why Buttercup?” he asked, referring to her official code name.

She had a code name, Jiya would be so jealous.

She groaned. “Blame Hemingway.”

“How was I to know you’d never properly experienced absinthe?” He ransacked his pockets for his flask, then glared at Josie when he came up empty. “We’re talking about horses and then out pours some crazy story about a man named Flynn and a horse named Buttercup. The name stuck.”

“Flynn?” Dave gave her a quizzical look.

“Long story short? He kinda joined the team.” Lucy glanced away, hiding her tears.

Josephine clapped her hands together, giving Lucy a moment to collect herself. “Oh, Lucy, I almost forgot. Dave brought another book for you.”

“That’s fantastic!” Lucy wiped away her tears, a sliver of hope blooming inside her with every new book Josephine and Hemingway brought her back from Paris. All three so far had been about his military prowess in the civil war. None containing any information about the assassination.

Josephine retrieved a book wrapped in plain brown paper from her bag. “Here it is. One day you’ll have to explain this fascination with Ulysses S. Grant.”

“I told you, I was a teacher once.” Here in France,  she taught English to children occasionally, but it wasn’t the same. She untied the twine, unwrapping the book and finding a historical fiction novel entitled _The Mystery of the Disappearing Assassin._ “Um, this isn’t exactly--” The author’s name caught her attention. “Kate Drummond. How in the world?”

Josie looked uncertain given Lucy’s response. “Do you know of the author? I didn’t think you read much fiction, but when I asked the bookseller, she recommended it and I thought you might like it.”

Lucy turned to the first page and found an illustration of Grant’s Inaugural Ball, but instead of the simple gathering of Washington’s elite, she found a still life of the moment after Flynn shot the President.

She flipped to the the table of contents. Scanning down the list, she searched for any clue, anything to give her the tiniest shred of hope that he survived. Her heart stuttered when she read the title of the last chapter: _Daring Daylight Rescue._ She somehow dared to flip to the first page of the story and found the name of the hero.

Garcia Preston.

xxxxx

“Flynn. Oh my god, Flynn!” Jiya jumped up, hunching over the computer and waving at him to join her. “Get up here.”

“Talk to me.” He tossed aside the current historical text he’d been searching and took the stairs two at a time.

She pulled up the article. “So I set up a program to comb through the internet for mentions of Lucy Preston in any combination with Hemingway, Buttercup, etcetera. Constraining it to within our twenty-five year window, focusing on discoveries and the like. I kept coming up empty.”

“And this warranted excitement why?” He raised an eyebrow, leaning on the desk.

“Patience, Padowan.” Jiya eyed him sideways. “Have I ever led you astray before? Okay, don’t answer that. Just listen. I kept coming up empty, but Lucy’d be careful not to leave a paper trail of her name anywhere. So I was back at the square one. Until I remembered that the team also met Josephine Baker in 1927. Which led me to the Gurlitt Collection.”

Flynn scanned the article over her shoulder. “Discovered 2012. 1500 priceless works of art found in the apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt. Son of Hildebrand Gurlitt. Renoir. Gauguin. Henri de Toulous-Lautrec. Otto Dix. Paul Klee. It’s now in a Museum of Fine Arts in Bern. Okay, give me the rest.”

Jiya smiled. “Otto Dix. German artist classified Degenerate by Adolf Hitler. They found some of his sketches in that collection.” She scrolled down and enlarged the image she wanted. “See anyone familiar?”

“Is that Hemingway and Josephine Baker?” Jiya nodded, letting him study the drawing. The two sat across from each other, mid dinner party, a bottle of wine passed between them; a woman with a wooden leg holding up glass and laughing off to the side. A tall, lean man leaned against a sink in the background while a woman with small round glasses turned to the dark-haired woman seated next to her. He sucked in his breath. “Is that Lucy?”

“I think it is.” Jiya faced the naked hope on Flynn’s face.

He was hungry for any look at her. “Are there any more?”

“I’m sorry, I got so excited I just stopped on that one.” She scrolled further down and her finger froze mid action.

“It’s her,” he breathed out.

Jiya enlarged the image. “There’s some writing down at the bottom. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

Flynn couldn’t stop staring at her face. She looked sad, lost. Her coffee forgotten as if she saw something in the distance that drew her focus beyond the group surrounding her. Sitting beside her was one of the women from the first sketch, her wooden leg stretched in front of her, peeking out from beneath the table.

“Who’s the woman next to her?” He asked when he tore his attention from Lucy’s face.

Jiya squinted trying to increase the resolution on the sketch. “I don’t know yet. Why don’t you wake the others. It’s early, but they’ll want to help. We need everyone on research.”

xxxxx

“He’s alive,” Lucy breathed out. She didn’t care if the book was technically fiction, somehow Kate Drummond survived and latched onto the disappearance of Flynn from the hanging.

The group gave her various forms of confused looks except for Bam Bam. “What do you mean?”

“I thought he died.” Lucy looked wide-eyed at her one-time soldier. “It means he’s out there. And if he’s out there, he’ll never stop.”

“You fell in love with him.” Bam Bam didn’t need her to answer when her lips tightened into line and she closed her eyes against renewed tears.

“Do you see what this means?” She grabbed onto his arm after she pulled herself together. “We can go home. I don’t know when, but I know Garcia Flynn will find me. We just have to keep living our lives, leaving little clues to our existence.”

Ginny may not have understood everything, but she’d figured out enough. “You’d leave us?”

“I--” She glanced over the faces of the people who’d become her friends. She was a part of their lives now. A part of the Resistance. Her life had purpose. Meaning. It wasn’t a bad life. “I have people I need to get back to.”

“We’re your people,” Hemingway indicated Josie should return his flask now, which she did. After she sipped from it herself. “We need you.”

Lucy was about to assure them she had no idea when she’d be able to arrange her travel when the bell over the front door rang. A shadow darkened the room and she turned as the door  opened and three new people entered. Blinking, she reached for Bam Bam, afraid to believe for even the space of a heartbeat that all six foot four of Garcia Flynn stood fifteen feet away.

When Jiya stepped out from behind him, Lucy shot to her feet, already in motion. But when a face she never thought she’d see again found hers, the entire world stilled. The cafe fell away and she looked from Flynn to Amy and back again. She had no idea when she started crying or who hugged her first, all she knew was that her baby sister was in her arms. Flynn and Jiya shielded the sisters, shading the reunion from the onlookers.

This was for Lucy and Amy alone.

“I don’t care how,” Lucy pushed back her baby sister’s hair from her face, taking in the fact that she was alive. And apparently going on missions. “You’re here.”

“We’re here.” Jiya kissed her friend’s cheek and pulled back.

Flynn waited off to the side. Patient. Drinking in the sight of her. Memorizing the play of sunlight off her dark hair, glinting off the tears that fell from her warm brown eyes. Happy for the sisters, but terrified of Lucy’s reaction. He had failed her.

“Flynn,” she exhaled and Amy released her, stepping back. “You’re alive.”

“I am.” Now that she focused on him, he looked anywhere but at her. “Lincoln helped, but Wyatt and Jiya…”

“I’m glad,” she said, suddenly awkward. She wanted to thread her arms around him, to feel his body solid in her arms. She dreamt of this every night. But he held himself aloof. Contained. Did he regret what happened between them? She wrapped her arm her stomach, trying to keep the cavern inside her from expanding.

“I am too.” Flynn wanted to pull her into him, to know finally that she was safe and home. With him. Because she was his home and it mattered very little when or where that happened.

“It’s good to see you.”  

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. You two are hopeless.” Amy heard gasps and titters that came from the group seated at the table pretending not to listen to the two boneheads who simply refused to get it together. “Lucy, this man has been brooding in his room every night since _he lost you._ And yes, that is how he puts it, because he is a dramatic dumpster fire of a man.”

Amy turned to Flynn leveling him with a Preston glare he knew all too well. “What my sister isn’t saying is she missed you, but she's worried you don’t love her anymore. It's been so long. Blah, blah, blah. Really she just wants you to kiss her.”

Jiya stifled a chuckle and fist-bumped Amy, who then indicated that Lucy and Flynn should get on with the kissing.

“Well, at least this explains her heavy sighs,” Ginny remarked to Hemingway just loud enough to ensure Lucy heard.

Hemingway added his two cents worth. “Kiss the girl or I will.”

Lucy started to turn to tell them to pipe down when Flynn closed the distance and swept her up, her body crushed against his chest. His lips found hers, begging her forgiveness. The loneliness of their separation crested over them as they lost themselves in being found.

“That’s more like it,” Hemingway called and Josie smacked his arm to get him to shut up.

Lucy and Flynn parted, reluctant if their still entwined fingers were any indication, and turned to the friends she’d made in her time there, their faces expectant.

“Well I guess introductions are in order.”

_We spent the afternoon, all of us, old friends and new, walking around Lyons, France in the middle of World War II. Showing the team the life I made there. Jiya and Amy ran off in search of whatever adventure they could find and Bam Bam followed behind to keep them out of trouble. I shouldn’t have been surprised when Flynn and Hemingway talked away the afternoon, becoming fast friends._

_I spent that last day as I had spent most others. With Ginny and Josie, climbing cobblestone streets and picking the summer wildflowers from the fields behind the convent._

We stood on stone pathway in front of the cottage that had become my home. Dix passed her a sketch of she and Flynn standing feet away from each other, both afraid to move. Hemingway kissed her cheek and told them to visit soon. She, Ginny, and Josie formed a huddle of messy, crying friends.

When the ladies untangled their limbs, she turned to Bam Bam. “You’re not coming, are you?” Lucy knew the answer.

Bam Bam shook his head. “No. I’m not. I’ve made a life here. I’ve got a girl in Paris. Josie’d be lost without me.”

Josephine Baker smiled back at him. “I would miss you ever so much.”

“Plus, he shot me,” he mentioned, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at Flynn.

“Not me. Karl,” her time-traveling assassin replied and crossed to stand in front of Bam Bam.

“You called the shots.” The soldier didn't blink or back down.

“Fair enough.” Flynn extended his hand. “I do apologize for that.”

_When I die, in the last seconds of my life, I will remember that morning in the cafe. When the universe gave me back my sister. Everything before that forgotten, worth every day spent stranded thinking Flynn died in 1869._

_From an endless future fighting Rittenhouse to the stables of the White House. From the cacophony of the crowd, fleeing Flynn's death to the fishmonger and the baker and the artist in 1941._

_This mission changed everything._

_All of it had been worth that single hug._

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All of Lucy's friends in the French Resistance are actual people. You already know Josephine Baker and Ernest Hemingway, but Rose Valland, Virginia Hall, and Otto Dix are also really fascinating and you should totally look into them. The story about Hildebrand Gurlitt and his son Cornelius is also true. They really did find all these priceless pieces of art back in 2012. Check out the Netflix series Raiders of the Lost Art, you'll find out more about the Degenerate artists during WWII. 
> 
> Did they all work together? There is absolutely no proof that they did. There is also no proof that they didn't. ;-) All their connections come simply from an overactive imagination. 
> 
>  
> 
> Seriously though. Check these people out.


End file.
